A group management system includes one or more manufacturing devices that perform a specified semiconductor process with respect to a workpiece and one or more server devices that are connected to the manufacturing devices. The group management system is a system that manages a manufacturing device such as a semiconductor manufacturing device or a liquid crystal panel manufacturing device. Various proposals for efficiently managing the manufacturing devices have been introduced. For example, there is proposed a group management system in which, after an abnormality is detected from an inspection target group (a time period, a device group, a recipe group and/or a parameter group) set by a user, the overall inspection data of the inspection target group are taken into the group management system so that a user can analyze the abnormality.
In the group management system, there may be a case that, during a work performed by a user, such as maintenance and repair, trouble and process evaluations of a manufacturing device and the like, the user may attempt to refer to or copy the data of a plurality of manufacturing devices. However, in such cases, as a security protocol, it is necessary for the user to go to a manufacturing device for referring to the data, and to check necessary data on a screen of the manufacturing device. If the manufacturing device that the user was referring to is in use, the necessary data may not be checked on the screen. Furthermore, since the screen may be in use even during a downtime, due to various kinds of analysis works, parameter settings and the like, it may not enhance the work efficiency. That is, a problem is posed in that the user's work efficiency becomes poor even if the downtime of a manufacturing device grows longer.
In this case, the user's work can be made efficient by installing a function capable of referring to and copying data to a manufacturing device. However, a high-load process such as a data analysis or the like has to be implemented in the manufacturing device. This may adversely affect the control performance of the manufacturing device. Thus, there is a fear that a process result gets worse. In addition, a security protection against virus and so forth is needed. On the other hand, if the function is independently installed, there is posed a problem in that the number of development processes grows larger and repetitive repair may become necessary.